


Green and Gold

by The_Lionheart



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Gravity Falls
Genre: At the Mountains of Madness, Child Death, Even weird eldritch horror cats, F/M, Filbrick loves All Cats, Flashbacks, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Explicit Sex, Possession, Post-World War I, Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel, Self-Harm, Trauma, the road to hell is paved with good intentions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-19 04:32:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8190224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lionheart/pseuds/The_Lionheart
Summary: "There's an ancient, ancient garden that I see sometimes in dreams,Where the very Maytime sunlight plays and glows with spectral gleams;Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms seem to wither into grey,And the crumbling walls and pillars waken thoughts of yesterday."- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Garden"





	1. The Call

It is a generally accepted superstition that a shooting star heralds importance- good or ill- when it coincides with the birth of a child.

Thousands of miles away from the room where the squalling infant takes his first breath, an explosion flattens over two thousand square kilometers of forest in Siberia.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Filbrick Pines is ten years old when his brother Stanford comes home from the Great War. Stanford is a hero, is the greatest, and two years later Stanford dies in a sanitarium in Massachusetts.

Filbrick is fifteen when his father inducts him into the ways of the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel. It should have been his brother, but his brother is dead, and Filbrick ~~the spare~~ is all that remains of their family line.

A man of this order, his father says, must be honest, must be brave, must have a will of iron capable of resisting the lures of any manner of lesser spirits. Filbrick assumes this is a metaphor. He will learn in time that it is not.

A man of this order, his father says, must be hale, must be a hunter, must be a killer when the time comes, must be skilled with a rifle and a sword, must know the ways of death. Filbrick spends hours every day with a rifle in the Pine Barrens, brings back rabbits and squirrels and doves.

A man of this order, his father says, must be a hero, must be holy; he stops and weeps, for the first time in three years, _it should have been Stanford, it should have been him_.

His father never reveals what else a man of this order must be. Filbrick has to find that out on his own.

Filbrick does not like the lodge where meetings are gathered- he is young and not a full member, so he is excluded from all but the most cursory of proceedings. He recognizes some of the men there from Temple, but some of them he thinks are from the Presbyterian church on the other side of their small town, and some of them come and go, never staying for more than one or two meetings. There are usually more travelers than locals at these meetings, some of them ex-soldiers wearing the medals his brother was buried in.

The summer Filbrick turns seventeen the men of the order come to him, his father's eyes downcast and burning with a rage Filbrick will not understand until he is a father himself.

They say: there is trouble brewing. It is not a war of men; it is not a war at all. If it comes, it will be a slaughter, and all men everywhere will fall. They say: we are sending an expedition. We need a seventh man. You might not return, but you will save everyone on this earth if you succeed.

Filbrick is not a man yet and is not a father yet, and so he does not yet understand his father's fury at the words they use to entice him, the way they tell him that he is a number and expected to die as such, the last child of David Pines.

Filbrick Pines is seventeen years old when the old men of the Order ask him to save the world, and he accepts.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_July 12, 1925_

Father,

We have made Port in Miami, Florida. Professor Ganem says we are making Good Time. He says that we are to meet a Friend of his, a Professor Webb, regarding the trouble everyone says will happen. He says some of the troubles have already happened. We Will Have To See About That. I know it will do no good to tell you not to worry. Please tell Mother not to worry.

Your Son,

Filbrick A. Pines

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nobody calls him Filbrick on this boat- it's Pines or Pinesy or Kid or Boy, because he's the youngest by two years of anyone else, at least of the members of their party. Professor Ganem is the oldest, with a six year old son waiting at home for him. Maurice Prescott and John Beatty are both in their thirties, and Julius Durante and Fernando Alvarez are both the same age Stanford would have been. Mickey Jones is youngest, next to Filbrick, and he is the one who teases Filbrick about his age the most. Nobody uses their given names but the Professor, and even he usually calls Filbrick Boy or Mr. Pines, as if he's one of his students.

"Hey Kid," Mickey says- lately everyone else calls him Jonesy, and Filbrick isn't sure if he's allowed to use the nickname. Mickey peers over his shoulder, close enough that the sparse hairs of his beard rub against Filbrick's cheek. "Whatcha writin'? Letter home?"

"Yes, that's what I'm writing," Filbrick says stiffly, unsure of how to proceed. Home is cold, quiet, contemplative, a small family of three staying clean and keeping to themselves so the neighbors don't have reason to talk- Filbrick doesn't know, but he would guess that Mickey's family is in many ways the opposite.

"That's the shortest letter home I've ever seen, and that includes the letter ol' Davey "No Family" Smithson wrote home one time," Mickey comments, his body still slung up flush and warm against Filbrick's back. "You comin' out to town with us? We're not leavin' port til breakfast."

"No, I'd better not. The Professor said we're to avoid dens of ill repute so that agents of evil forces don't waylay us," he replies seriously. Mickey laughs at that, and he frowns- it's not exactly a lighthearted thing to worry about.

"Wow, Kid, you're really something, you know that?" Mickey gets off of him, tousling his hair with one broad hand. "Okay, well, we're gonna see the sights. You keep an eye out for those evil agents."

Filbrick spends a long time alone in his bunk, trying to rearrange his hair and not totally sure what it is that's bothering him about the whole thing. He's glad when Miami is behind them.

He doesn't know why Mickey does that. He doesn't like it, not really. He misses it whenever Mickey's not around. He doesn't think his father would understand, so he doesn't write about it when they make port in New Orleans. After their business is done there- after the Professor comes and tells him he did well, after Mickey comes and tells him he saved his life, after Filbrick stays awake for two nights thinking about blood splashing into the green swamp water of the bayou, after he can't stop dreaming about how one moment he fired a gun at a man who couldn't have been older than Mickey and the next moment there's red everywhere, on the trees, on the branches, on Filbrick, on Mickey- after that business is concluded, and the Professor comes and tells him not to worry, that he did well, that he did exactly right-

Filbrick doesn't know if his father would understand any of it.

Stanford would have understood, Filbrick thinks one night, staring at the bunk overhead where Mickey sleeps. Stanford would have known what this feeling is.

But Stanford died mad and raving these five years past, Filbrick remembers bitterly.

"Hey, Pinesy," Mickey says, his voice half-drugged with sleep.

"Hey, Jonesy," Filbrick replies quietly.

"Did your folks tell you about the kind of people we'd meet in the Order?"

"No," Filbrick says. Mickey is silent for a while.

"Were you crying last night, Pinesy?"

Filbrick pulls his woolen blanket to his chin, despite the heat.

"Let me go to sleep, Jones. I can't save you from a murderous cultist if you keep me up with your talk all night."

"You saved my life, you know."

"Yes. You told me."

"I won't forget a thing like that."

Filbrick doesn't have a response for that. He lays silently until he goes to sleep. He dreams of Stanford, locked away in a crumbling Victorian house, clawing at the door until his fingers are bloody, clawing at his eyes until they, too, are bloody. He dreams of Stanford screaming unheard for hours and days, of falling silent and still, of the clatter of a food dish waking him into a frenzy, of Stanford begging the King in Yellow not to take him, not to take his baby brother.

He dreams that Stanford dies begging, and everything is red against the green of the swamp, and everything is yellow against the gray of the filthy room.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The boat- The Professor calls it the Constant Faith, and if that's a joke Filbrick doesn't understand it- hugs the coast. They travel down through the Gulf, following scraps of tales and legends, following local stories and whispered rumors: madness, blood, gods, depravity. Prescott tells them of his poor, lost sister, Ariel who could have been a poetess; Durante tells them of his cousin and best friend bewitched into insanity while on a mission for the Order; even Mickey, faltering and avoiding the eyes of all those around him, tells them of the thing that came for his mother, the fiendish burning shape that tore the wall from the rest of the building and left his mother's charred footprints behind.

Filbrick tells them nothing. There is nothing to tell.

"You're from New Jersey, right Pines?" Beatty does not like Filbrick. Filbrick doesn't know if he wants to know the reason why. "Why don't you regale us with stories about the Jersey Devil?"

"I don't have any stories about the Jersey Devil," Filbrick says.

"You don't have any stories about anything, do you Pines?" Beatty asks.

"Leave him alone," Mickey says, frowning.

"They shouldn't have made us bring a kid," Beatty says, still smiling even though he sounds like he's disgusted. "The Professor shouldn't have brought him along."

"He pulls his weight," Alvarez says, breaking three and a half days of silence to defend Filbrick. "Leave the boy be, John."

Beatty scoffs, and Filbrick stands.

"Excuse me." He goes back to his bunk and reads quietly. It's better that way.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_September 23, 1925_

Father,

I am sorry I have not Written in weeks. Many of the places we make Port are barely more than a few houses and a suspicious Gaoler. We do not have Many Opportunities to write home. Also Professor Ganem has said he will keep the Order abreast of our Journey so I trust you have received some news before this.

We learn something New in every stop. This is not always a Good Thing. By all reports the Island that caused so many fits of madness this spring has sunk again. Some People were hoping it would not. They do not seem to be Taking This Well.

Our Expedition is set to explore the Jungles of Colombia after tonight. It is nice to see something other than the inside of a Boat for once but I miss Home all the same. Please tell Mother not to worry.

Your Son,

Filbrick A. Pines


	2. The Shadow

Durante and Beatty were overseas together in the War, and they stay close to one another most days and nights. When Beatty tells stories over the campfire of the things they've seen as part of the Order- graverobbers, wizards, eaters of the dead- Durante always stands to the side, correcting Beatty's pronunciation but never revealing when Beatty's stories are true and when they delve into exaggeration. Filbrick doesn't know what to make of it on their second night delving into the Colombian jungle, when Durante comes over with a tin mug of some malodorous home-brewed tea during the second hour of Filbrick's watch.

"Take it, it'll put hairs on your chest," he says, and Filbrick takes it but doesn't drink.

"That's not going to be necessary," he tells him, and Durante raises an eyebrow.

"I don't believe a kid like you'd have any chest hair yet," he remarks, and Filbrick shrugs.

"Then clearly you've never met a Pines," he says, and Durante laughs, a sound Filbrick has never heard in nearly two and a half months of travel together.

"There it is! I was wondering when that famous Pinesean wit would come out," he says, taking a seat on a downed tree trunk next to Filbrick. "As a matter of fact, I _have_ met a Pines. Your brother and I were in France together for a time."

Filbrick's head snaps up, his breath catching in his throat. "You... you were friends with Stanford?"

"As much as anyone was," Durante says, eyes sliding away. "Not much room for friendship in a trench."

"You're friends with Beatty," Filbrick points out, and Durante huffs.

"We came home and went straight into the Order. Seven years of missions together, you learn a little about a person." Filbrick blinks, then looks away, stifling the urge to sigh. Durante looks at him, waiting a few minutes before giving his shoulder a tap. "What's on your mind, Kid?"

"It's very green in Colombia," Filbrick says, drumming his fingertips on the rifle in his lap.

"So it is, Kid." Durante waits, and finally Filbrick does sigh.

"He left University to go to the War," he says. "He said it was the right thing to do. But then he came home and he was... different."

"We all came home different," Durante says, after a few moments. "Don't ever let anyone try to tell you that war didn't change them."

"Yes, but you and Beatty are alive," Filbrick says, and cannot finish _but Stanford is not_. He takes a sip of the horrible tea, letting it burn down his throat rather than have to speak.

"Yes." Durante sighs, too. "I met your brother by chance. He was a member of the Order already, but I had never heard of such a ridiculous thing. Monsters and spookums, fiends and visions, it... it made him sound a bit mad, even though he was generally a solid fellow to have at your side. He was... well, you remember what he was like. Excitable. A bit of a charlatan, sometimes, bursting with personality, you could trust him with your life in an instant but you'd be an idiot to trust him with a dollar. And then, when... when he changed."

Filbrick's fingers draw slow, swooping circles in the cool metal of the rifle's barrel, the warm wood of the stock.

"The village was nameless, just a bunch of houses leaning against the walls of a monastery. All the villagers were gone, we wanted to hope they'd been evacuated, but none of us ever found out what the place was called, we never..." Durante's voice fades, and he clears his throat. "We were ordered to make sure there were no Germans hiding out in the catacombs beneath the monastery."

"Were there?" Filbrick asks, and Durante shakes his head.

"Not Germans. Something else was living there." Durante shakes his head. "The first thing we saw was that some bastard had dug out all the bones from the tombs and the ossuaries and... used them. I'd seen... a lot of things in the War before this, things that make you believe in the evil that lives in men, but this was the first time I thought that the Devil was real, if this could have happened. Some of the skeletons were whole, and affixed in such displays that you would lose a piece of yourself to see them, to know that someone saw those children and thought-"

He cuts himself off, and Filbrick wonders.

"It... never mind. Most of the bones in an ossuary are not whole skeletons, so there were very few of those. The loose bones were arranged to look like... furniture, chairs, wall coverings, that sort of thing. Many of them were broken to pieces. Most were ancient- dry as anything, bleached white. Some, though... some were fresh. We found the mouth of the cavern at the same time that your brother found the helmet." Durante chuffs out a laugh. "He was still trying to be cheery. Well, fellas, I found some of a German! Only he picked it up and the head and spine followed. We never... we never found the rest of that poor Kraut bastard, either."

"You know that feeling when you wake up from a dream and you can't tell if it's a part of the dream or not? That's what it was like down there. We found the... things that had done it. We looked and it was like a nest of termites below us, and your brother... your brother saved us, Kid. He saw it, first, he forced us all back, he made us be silent, even the Captain. They were far enough below us that it looked like termites, but your brother saw the carved stairs that went all the way down, and he saw that it wasn't... it wasn't termites, they were people, or something that looked enough like. I stayed behind, I wasn't going to leave a man behind, and ol' Pines pointed out to me what they'd gathered 'round, this big stone idol like something from the pictures. It had a big, open mouth. There was still pieces of the villagers in it."

There is a sharp pop from the fire as a knot of wood explodes, and Filbrick tries to hide the fact that he's jumpier now than he's ever been.

"There's some things you shouldn't have to see, and there's some things you shouldn't have to do," Durante says quietly. "I've never seen anybody throw six grenades that quick before that night. The first two scatter the mass below us, and it was so loud I felt like I went deaf of it. The next two right after, at the feet of the statue, and the last couple, your crazy bastard of a brother got them in that beast's mouth, blew the top of its head clean off, stone flyin' all around. I got this scar here from a chip that whizzed past me," he adds, showing Filbrick his forearm, the thin pale line across it.

"The... things down below don't like that as much as we do. They start climbin' up the stairs, screamin' for blood, and your brother- your brother-" Durante shakes his head. "He's shootin' like the devil, but there's just too many left alive, and then they- they came for us on these big things, these flying things..."

He falls silent. Filbrick looks over at him, and his eyes are wide and glassy, reflecting the night sky.

"I woke up and my gun was hot and empty. Stanford's is empty, too, and his bayonet's red and slick, and he's draggin' me back up through to the ossuary where our men were. You could hear the screamin' from below like every Sunday sermon come to life. The Captain takes one look at us and asks your brother what to do. That grizzled old fuck, asking for orders!" Durante exhales slowly, his eyes closing. "So your brother tells them: collapse the entrance. Demolish the monastery. Warn people it's not safe, the ground's not sturdy, anything to keep people as far away as possible. And they listen to him. And they do it. We could hear the screamin' all night and all day as we left through the forest."

Durante raises a hand, hesitating, then puts it on Filbrick's shoulder. "I don't know what happened after that, to make him... do what he did, after he got home. But that wasn't your brother, Filbrick. Whatever it was that came home and... and hurt those people, that wasn't him. Your brother was a hero. He saved all of our lives, and who knows how many others by blocking up the entrance to that place."

Filbrick nods silently. It's the first time in weeks anyone's called him by name.

"So you joined the Order because of him?" Filbrick asks softly, and Durante nods.

"A bit. It got hard to pretend all Pinesy's stories were just stories after the things we'd seen. He got me in touch with a couple fellas who pointed me in the right direction, and, well. Turned out your brother got hurt down there, all clawed up pretty bad, and they send him home ahead of the victory. I end up transferred into a squad that's mostly lads from the Order, s'where I ran into Beatty."

"And here you are," Filbrick concludes.

"And here we are," Durante agrees. "Kid, you done with that teacup?"

Filbrick checks- it's empty, he must have sipped at it while Durante was talking. He hands it over.

"Thank you for the story," Filbrick says, and Durante shrugs.

"I get sick of hearing Beatty bullshit every night."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~~_September 25, 1925_ ~~

~~Father,~~

~~Why don't you ever want to talk to me about Stanf~~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They find the temple on the fourth day; their guide looks at it and runs, and no amount of shouting can convince him to return. Filbrick thinks of Durante's story-

_block the entrance demolish the building stop anyone from ever coming near_

-and thinks their guide has the right idea about what to do here, but the Professor is delighted to find proof, he says, honest proof that they're doing the right thing. There's an uncomfortably high number of giant, snake-headed statues of men standing around, and weird markings that the Professor says is the language of the Egyptian pharaohs. He takes pictures and says this is a great day for anthropology.

Alvarez and Prescott both look at him like he's a fool and start drawing with chalk and chanting words around them. Beatty and Durante say a few words and mark each other's foreheads with an oily substance.

Even Mickey takes out a candle and makes passes with his hands over it, muttering words to it until the wick lights itself, the warm red glow sudden and welcome.

"Aren't you going to put up a ward or nothin', Pinesy?" Mickey asks.

Filbrick loads his rifle and cocks it.

"No."

Mickey looks at him with a funny expression on his face, before he sighs and tells Filbrick to hold still. He says something to the flame of his candle and dips the pad of his thumb into the melted wax, then presses it onto the center of Filbrick's forehead, right over his brow.

It's warm and stiff and sticky, but not unpleasantly so.

"You're welcome, Kid," Mickey mutters.

They enter into the temple. It is a day and a half before they can make it back out again.


	3. In the Walls

Filbrick chambers a round, inhales, exhales.

A man of this order must be honest.

He fires, and black blood sprays across the stone room.

A man of this order must be brave.

He reloads while Alvarez shoots the hand off the thing trying to snatch the Professor.

A man of this order must be hale.

He aims carefully; he would not want to hit Beatty, no matter how much Beatty hates him.

A man of this order must be a hunter.

He shoots, and something dies screaming and hissing.

A man of this order must be a killer.

Durante and Prescott both move the huge boulder over the mouth of the tunnel, blocking the entrance to the lower temple.

A man of this order must be a hero.

The Professor lights a match and tosses it into the small hole; the shrieking inferno blisters the skin on Filbrick's face immediately, but he can't look away until he knows they're not being followed by any more of those... creatures.

A man of this order must be holy.

Filbrick shoots every cultist who swarms out of the huts surrounding them. He doesn't realize the last one is a half-starved, chest-high boy child until he looks down at the pale, dirty body lying at his feet, blood soaking into his shoes.

Filbrick's fingers tremble and he cannot put his rifle down, not until Mickey takes it from him, saying something in soft tones that he can never remember later. He cannot hold a fork or a knife or a spoon, stares blankly at his food until Mickey gently asks him if it's alright for him to help, turns away when Mickey tries to feed him. He doesn't eat until they make it back to the Constant Faith. He has vague memories of the journey through the Colombian jungle, of being stopped by an old woman in Cienaga who says, in broken English, that he is cursed, that his line is cursed, that no one of his blood will ever have peace in this land.

"Then I'll make sure none of my children ever come here," he remembers saying, but from afar.

He has vague memories of the Professor asking patient questions; he must have answered them, because the Professor has pages of notes from this conversation, but he can't think of anything he's said. He has vague memories of the other members of their party talking, including him in things, passing him food or tools or asking him for help. He's sure he does these things, but it's like grasping at water.

He wakes up every night, his face wet with tears, Mickey's arms around his shoulders as he sings old folk songs in his mother's native Irish. He gets used to the smell of him, of the sound of Mickey's voice in another language, and eventually he stops waking up every night, goes back to the cold comfort of old nightmares about his parents, his brother, anything but that jungle, that temple, the blood, the fire, the boy-

He wakes up crying in the middle of the night as they make port in Galveston, and when Mickey tries to shush him and tells him that he saved them, that he did the right thing, he sobs into Mickey's nightshirt, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to. Mickey brushes his thin, cool lips against Filbrick's forehead, I know, Kid, I know, you did your best, no one's angry with you, Kid.

Filbrick still trembles, still sees blood soaking into the dirt at his feet every time he closes his eyes, but a little less, every night.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_November 1, 1925_

Father,

I am sorry for not having written Sooner. We will be home before the end of the Month. Please tell Mother she can stop Worrying.

Your Son,

Filbrick A. Pines

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When Filbrick turns twelve years old, he sees his brother for the very last time.

The two years after Stanford comes home from France are hard- Stanford travels much, always searching for the answer to a question he never dares utter to their parents or to Filbrick. Filbrick does not know this yet- right now, at the age of twelve, Filbrick just loves that Stanford's home at all, that the brother ten years his senior has time for him. He teaches him how to clean the little peashooter he gave Filbrick for his birthday, he is impressed when he teaches Filbrick how to track birds and small animals through the Pine Barrens, when Filbrick always knows exactly what the animal will turn out to be. He takes Filbrick to shops and bodegas and he introduces him to strange people and is so proud to tell them, this is the baby brother I was telling you of. Stanford never seems to work but he always has money; his parents don't approve but they don't outright accuse him of anything, either.

One day Stanford wakes up in a panic, rushes from the house, and when Filbrick tries to catch him, tries to stop him, Stanford grasps him by the shoulders and screams at him to run, run before it happens, run before _he_ comes-

And Stanford drops him with a shudder and flees.

Filbrick is a good boy. Filbrick does as he is told.

But today, Filbrick doesn't remember to be a good boy who does what he is told. Filbrick is shocked for a few moments, but there is nothing and no one he loves in this world more than his brother. He runs after where Stanford's gone, his eyes picking out his brother's bootprints in the packed dirt and garbage of the street, his talent as a tracker keen as ever.

It is already too late by the time he gets to the library, the hoary old librarian- a man old enough to be their grandfather- lying dead across the steps, and Filbrick would have stopped there with the frightened crowd, but he can see Stanford's bootprints in the man's blood, leading inside. He follows, because that's where Stanford is.

He finds Stanford in the shelves, standing over the body of a woman in brown and a girl Filbrick's age, their eyes staring and open and lifeless.

"Oh, hey, Shooting Star," his brother says brightly, his mouth stretched in an impossibly wide grin. "You don't mind if I borrow Pine Tree for a moment, do you?"

Filbrick knows the color of his brother's eyes- if he was a romantic, he would call it the cast of sunlight off gold onto the warm wood of their father's desk. He is not a romantic, and therefore only calls it brown.

Stanford steps close, and his eyes are vivid yellow, blood flecked across his white shirt.

"Stan?" Filbrick asks softly, and his brother laughs.

"Sure, believe that," he says, and he picks up a heavy tome- later, Filbrick will learn that it is a bowdlerized English translation of a French copy of De Vermis Mysteriis- and swings. Filbrick is mercifully unconscious the moment his brother hits him with the book, and he never sees Stanford again, even after he is apprehended in Massachusetts two days later.

Stanford dies four months later, and his parents refuse to allow him to attend Stanford's funeral.

Filbrick's not even sure where Stanford was buried.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"We'll be home in time for Christmas," Prescott says over dinner, picking at his food- some sort of hearty stew, seasoned over-much with garlic.

"That'll be good, won't it Pinesy?" Mickey asks, elbowing his side.

"You know I'm Jewish," Filbrick says flatly.

"That doesn't mean you can't be happy about Christmas," Mickey persists.

"That's exactly what it means," Filbrick sighs, and Alvarez snorts but says nothing.

"New York isn't so far from New Jersey," Mickey says, looking at his bowl. "You should come see the sights for a spell, after you see your parents. You could come stay with me and my Da for a bit."

Filbrick thinks about it. It goes quiet, and he's not sure why everyone else is watching him, but he shrugs and goes back to eating. "Alright. I'll write you once I'm home and we'll set that up."

"Good! Great! Excellent. You'll- you'll like it with us, Pinesy," Mickey says, beaming.

After dinner, the Professor calls Filbrick into his quarters and asks him to take a seat across the small desk he has wedged in there.

"I'm sure you're wondering why I've called you in here, Boy," he says warmly, adjusting the pince-nez he wears on a chain around his neck to peer down at his notes.

"I figured it's because you have something private to talk about," Filbrick says plainly. Professor Ganem pauses, clears his throat.

"Right you are. I wanted to ask you something- over the course of our journey, we have seen many wondrous things together. Would you please... describe the Colombian temple for me?" he asks, and Filbrick leans back with a small frown.

"You... wrote down my statement, didn't you?" he asks uncertainly, and the Professor nods.

"As a matter of fact, Boy, I recorded parts of everyone's statements using my phonograph. I-I understand if you may not have noticed it at the time," he adds kindly, and Filbrick looks guiltily away.

"Oh. What's wrong with my statement?" he asks, and Professor Ganem uses a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his balding head.

"Nothing, my boy, nothing at all. Just- the inside of the temple in Colombia. Describe the large room where we were first attacked."

Filbrick swallows drily. "Well... it was dark, 'cept for the lights we carried with us. Not much to see at first. It was a long room with stone floors. The floors weren't smooth, when I scuffed my boots they made a sort of, a soft sound, like a scraping noise-"

"What did you see once we had more light?" the Professor asks, writing furiously on his page.

"Stone walls, stone pillars supporting the ceiling. Probably stone ceiling." The Professor gives him an expectant look, and he continues. "There were carvings all over the pillars that looked like snakes. Just a bunch of snakes tangled up. I thought at first they were carved to look like vines, but if it was, they didn't have leaves. And some of the snakes had rattles and the diamondback patterns, so I recognized'em for snakes. They didn't look all that good, though, like whoever did the carving wasn't much good at sculpting."

The Professor clears his throat, tugging his collar. "Do you remember anything about what color the snake carvings were? O-or if you saw anything moving?"

"Um," Filbrick says. "Stone color. Sort of medium gray, I guess? Um, nothing was moving because it was all stone, Professor. Oh, I guess our shadows move, don't they? Is... is that what you mean?"

"Ah, no. Thank you," the Professor says, looking up at the ceiling. "What can you tell me about the creatures who attacked us?"

"Sort of smooth-skinned fellows," Filbrick says, increasingly bewildered by the Professor's odd behavior. "Wearing skirts, looked like they was painted up green and gray about the face and chest. Big arms, big hands, sharp talons on th'end of 'em. I don't think I saw a single nipple or navel in the lot. Everybody looked like they filed their teeth to sharp points. I counted forty-five but it sounded like more was coming from the tunnel."

"Anything about that strike you as unusual at all?" Ganem asks. Filbrick shrugs.

"What's stranger than a bunch of people holed up in a temple in the middle of nowhere who want to resurrect some sort of snake-monster-god to take over the world?"

"That's... a fair statement, very fair," the Professor says, after a moment. "Have you been plagued with strange or terrible dreams since we left the temple?"

"Yes, sir," Filbrick says dutifully. The Professor breathes a sigh of relief.

"And what do you see in these dreams?" he asks. Filbrick hesitates, and the Professor hastily adds, "There is no judgement here, my boy, no matter how fantastical or strange-"

"The kid. The boy at the end," Filbrick admits, looking at hands, clenched tightly over his knees. The Professor pauses. "The... the little boy from the cultist village, sir. He was just a little..."

"The- the human cultists who tried to-" Ganem looks startled, like whatever he was expecting, it had nothing to do with what Filbrick's done.

"He was small and he _couldn't_ have hurt me and I didn't _see_ that until he was already-" Filbrick confesses, his throat tightening. "And- and he looked like he hadn't eaten a hot meal in the last week, and I just- I shot him and I- I can't stop thinking of, of-"

"It's alright, don't- don't cry," the Professor says, his face blurry through Filbrick's tears. "You couldn't have seen, you couldn't have known."

"I shoulda seen," he says, his shoulders hunching. "I w-was so scared I was gonna see you and Mickey and everybody get killed, and I just kept shooting because they kept coming and I, I, I-"

"It's alright, son," the Professor says gently, handing Filbrick a fresh handkerchief. Filbrick sniffles a bit, blowing his nose. "Will you be alright to continue, Mr. Pines? I have just one final thing I must ask you to describe."

"I-I'll be fine," Filbrick says, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. "Go ahead, sir."

The Professor opens a heavy, well-padded box and removes a small golden statue that looks like it came from the Colombian temple, taking extreme care not to look at it. Filbrick looks at it, then at the Professor, confused.

"Well... looks like somebody likes snakes a whole lot, Professor," he says finally. The Professor breathes out a small, nervous laugh.

"Good... good boy, Filbrick. You may go now."

 


	4. The Dream

The door slams, and Filbrick Pines steps inside, and he is shaking. It is October, 1950, and he and Ruth are both too old to be having children again, but-

_It is highly unusual, Observer Pines, but we will grant your request. Your son Sherman Pines will not be inducted into the ways of the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel._

"Pop! Pop! Pop!" Nine year old Shermie is running as fast as his little legs can carry him, ecstatic to see his father home before bedtime. "Pop! Pop, guess what!"

Filbrick picks him up and holds him close, and that would be enough to startle Shermie into silence by itself, because Filbrick hasn't held him like this since he was a baby, but Filbrick is crying and that is enough to startle Shermie into crying, too.

_Under one condition- your next son will be a Man of the Order._

"Fil, honey, you'll never guess what we found out today," Ruthie is saying, but she stops when she sees his husband and son, the boy bawling into his father's pressed shirt, silent tears leaking from behind Filbrick's dark glasses. "Filbrick, honey? Did... did they say no?"

"They said yes," he says, and the confusion on Ruthie's face is short-lived, and she puts a hand over her stomach- still flat, but not for long.

"But they're taking the next one," she says flatly, and Shermie is too young to understand why his father's holding him far too tightly, only that Ma was gonna tell Pop good news and instead everyone's crying on the floor in the pawn shop.

_I'm sorry, Pinesy, Mickey says, lowering the hood of his robe. You promised me, Filbrick says darkly, and Mickey winces. We can't let your bloodline stop here, with you. It's too important, Pinesy. The fate of the world- you understand, don't you?_

"They'll never take him," Filbrick promises, pressing a kiss into Shermie's dark hair. "Never. Never. They'll never take either of our boys." He makes a vow, screaming in his heart- never taking Sherman, never taking little unborn Stanford, neither of them, never, never, never, never.

In eight months he finds out that this promise doesn't have to be broken for them to take one of his children.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Happy New Year Mickey stop I will be in New York before month's end stop I will be glad to see you stop .

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Pines Kid you know you don't have to say stop in the telegram it's just a full stop .

Anyway Dad and me cannot wait to see you much to tell .

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"What do you think?" Mickey asks, and Filbrick huffs, his breath forming clouds that rise around them like ~~steam in the Colombian jungle~~ like the smoke off his Father's pipe.

"I think you shouldn't have made me visit if we're just going to spend the whole time working," Filbrick says, and Mickey gives him a playful shove.

It is early February, 1926, and Filbrick and Mickey have spent four days in Mickey's family's farmhouse, surrounded by Mickey's brothers and sisters and his boisterous father. Filbrick cannot imagine growing up in this noise and chaos. At home, Filbrick's parents won't talk about Colombia, about the mission that Filbrick still barely understands- they refer to it as his time away. They cut him off every time he tries to say something, which... is not very often, to be sure. Every night Mickey's Dad has some news about the Order, or about the Order's interests.

The Joneses raise horses, and that's what Mickey and Filbrick are doing, tossing hay bales around for purposes that Filbrick doesn't understand but to Mickey, this must mean something.

"You ever thought about what you're going to do when you're grown, Pinesy?" Mickey asks suddenly.

"Mickey, I'm six feet tall, I think I'm done growing," Filbrick says drily, and Mickey punches his arm. Filbrick rubs it slowly, glancing away so Mickey can't see the small smile forming. It's nicer here than on the boat.

"You got that baby face, Kid," Mickey teases, "I forget you're a big tough man now."

"Yes. That's me." Filbrick tosses a bale into a stack of other bales, and Mickey laughs.

"You can stop showin' off, ya beast. Hey, there's a show in town, if the Order don't want us d'you want to go see it?"

"Yes. I would love to spend time with you in town." Filbrick gives him a slow, confused look. "That... is why you invited me to visit, isn't it?"

"You know it," Mickey agrees, looking away with a curious red flush to his generally pallid features. No such luck, though- at dinner Mickey's Dad tells them that they're wanted.

"A local mission," he says, spooning food into the mouth of a squalling infant that Filbrick isn't entirely sure belongs to him. "In and out, check to see if there's a witch and get out. You're not to engage unless you're in danger, son."

"Are witches a common problem around here?" Filbrick asks, blinking.

"Witches are dead common," Mickey says, stuffing his face. "But we leave'em alone until they start doin' ill. I mean, we'd be puttin' our own fellas in the ground if we went after everybody who ever cast a spell or made a potion or somethin', but when ya get into 'makin' pacts wit' devils' and whatnot," Mickey mimes aiming a rifle. "Pow."

"Pow," Filbrick echoes, and Mickey reaches over and rubs his back, letting his thumb rest against the back of Filbrick's neck.

"You heard Dad, though, we ain't engagin' unless it turns out the witch is evil and also notices us."

"How do you know if a witch is evil or not?" Filbrick asks, and it's Mickey's Dad who answers.

"If you can't tell, just report back and let someone know what you did see. That's all."

They opt to walk, and it's nice enough despite the cold and the fog that descends on the lightly wooded path to the old house where the witch is supposed to be living.

"S'ominous fog," Mickey comments.

"Fog isn't ominous," Filbrick argues mildly. "Not unless it's low tide and the smell gets up in it."

"Yeah? What's special about low tide fog?" Mickey asks, breathing into his mittened hands.

"Smells terrible."

Mickey punches his arm.

A light goes on in a window of the house in question, and Mickey tenses, but when the door opens it's just an old woman, bundled against the cold with a candle in her hand.

"Hello, boys," the old woman calls, and Filbrick raises an arm in greeting. "What brings two strong lads to my door at so late an hour?"

"We've come to see if you've made a pact with any devils," Filbrick says, and Mickey makes a strangled noise beside him. "Going to have to advise against it if you haven't done it yet."

The old woman stares at Filbrick as he approaches, and then looks at Mickey, who's dragging his feet but following alongside. "Your friend here, he's not the subtle or cunning sort, is he?"

"No, ma'am, not a cunning bone in his body," Mickey admits grudgingly. "Dull as they come, our Pinesy."

"He's right, ma'am, I'm as dull as they come," Filbrick agrees. The old woman- and she's not particularly old at all, Filbrick sees now that they're close up, just around his Mother's age- gives a heavy sigh.

"Well, I do appreciate your honesty, lad. Ruthie," she yells back into the house. "Put on a pot of tea, we have company."

"Yes Aunt Gloria!" a girl calls back. The woman- possibly a witch, possibly Aunt Gloria- motions for Filbrick and Mickey to enter.

"It's cold as anything out there," she remarks, unwrapping her shawl to reveal a dark head of boyish close-cut hair, silver at her temples. "What are your names, lads?"

"Fil-" Filbrick starts, and Mickey elbows him furiously.

"Our names are private," Mickey says, and Aunt Gloria laughs. It's more of a hideous cackle than anything else, and Filbrick is forced to put another mark in the "possibly a witch" column.

"Well, Fil and Private, you're in the home of Gloria Pickman, currently playing host to my lovely niece Ruth. And now it's snowing down a storm," she remarks frankly, "so I expect you'll stay the night."

"It wasn't snowing when-" Mickey starts, looking over his shoulder at the open door, and sighs at the sudden, silent blizzard raging outside.

"Thank you for your kindness, ma'am," Filbrick says, tipping his cap.

"So, boys," Aunt Gloria says, hanging up her shawl and a woolen cape and motioning for them to do the same with their hats and coats and scarves. "You're here to see if I'm a witch."

"No, ma'am," Filbrick says, leaning down to pet the sleek black cat that's attempting to wind its way around his and Mickey's legs. "We don't care if you're a witch or not. We only just came to see if you were evil or not."

Mickey groans, burying his face in his hands. Aunt Gloria laughs again.

"Well, you're the first to politely ask, so I suppose I don't mind." A girl comes out with a tray and a stack of chipped cups- if Filbrick had to guess, he'd put her at ten or eleven years old, her brown hair laying in twin braids on her shoulders. "Ruthie, these boys want to know if we're witches."

The girl pauses, looking intensely at Mickey, then at Filbrick. "So you know we're witches?" she asks. "Do we have to kill'em or what, Aunt Gloria?"

"Oh Jesus, Kid, what kind of mess did you get me into?" Mickey moans.

"You invited me here," Filbrick reminds him, and Aunt Gloria is trying very hard not to laugh.

"We're not killing anybody. To answer your earlier question, boys- no, we aren't evil, and we haven't made any pacts with devils."

"Oh, good," Mickey says, turning to Filbrick. "Kid, put the witches' familiar down and stop petting it."

"He likes me," Filbrick says mildly, hugging the cat to his chest. "It's sweet, Mickey, pet it."

"It's got tiny little hands instead of feet, Pines," Mickey hisses. Filbrick pauses in his petting and picks up one of the cat's front paws, squeezing it a little.

"Cat can't help how it's made, Mickey," he says, and Aunt Gloria laughs for real.

"Well, if you two aren't the cutest witch hunters I ever chanced to meet."

"We're not witch hunters," Mickey protests hotly.

"But we'd be doing a pretty good job if we were," Filbrick says seriously. "Since we found you and everything."

"So you did," Aunt Gloria smiles. Ruthie rolls her eyes and starts handing out cups. "It's not often that we get visitors here who already expect to see witches and then don't get scared of Kitty Jenkins here."

"What's to be scared of?" Filbrick asks. "He's just a handsome cat. Yes he is. Very handsome."

"You ain't scared of the cat's weird human eyes and hands, mister?" Ruthie asks, blinking.

"You're not a bad sort, are you, Kitty Jenkins?" Filbrick coos. "Just a handsome little tom, aren't you?"

"You're an embarrassment," Mickey hisses.

"Kitty Jenkins is a girl cat," Ruthie adds.

Aunt Gloria has her hands over her own mouth, tears streaming down the sides of her face.

"Son, I hate to be the bearer of bad news," she gasps, laughing between her words, "but if you're going to be hunting for evil witches I think you should know that most witches do have cats, and you won't be able to pet those cats."

"Now what will I do with my life?" Filbrick asks, and even Mickey snorts a laugh at that.

The Witch puts them up in separate guest rooms, and Filbrick figures she must be lonely to live in such a big house with just her cat and the occasional niece.

_It's hot. It's hot in Colombia and he's dirty, and he fires his rifle to protect his friends, to protect Mickey, but after the bang of the gun it's Stanford lying at his feet, bleeding out._

_"Little brother," he chokes out, blood soaking into the dirt at Filbrick's feet. "You... did this-"_

Filbrick wakes up with a strangled wail, his brother's name on his lips, the witch's handsome cat sitting on his chest. It lets him put his arms around it and cry into its sleek black fur, and he can almost believe the cat's funny little paws are wiping away his tears.

"Meow," it says, and Filbrick sniffles.

"You don't need to _say_ meow," he mutters, "I know you're a cat."

"Hmmpf," the cat replies, butting its head against his face with a soft growling purr.

Filbrick doesn't dream again that night.


	5. The Whisperer

The Order says come, so Filbrick comes, a month shy of eighteen, feeling small and lost on the campus of a university just outside of Boston.

"Welcome, my boy," Professor Ganem says, and Filbrick shakes his hand. "How are you? How have you been? I heard you and young Mr. Jones spent a fortnight together earlier this year, you must have had some lovely adventures!"

"No, sir, I was there for two weeks," Filbrick says patiently, and the Professor stumbles over himself for a few steps before continuing like nothing had happened.

"I daresay you'd like to know why we brought you out here!" the Professor says brightly. Filbrick looks around at the brickwalled buildings, the quiet, studious-looking people all around.

"Well, yes, I would like to know. I guessed it was Order business. That's why I brought Mickey along to stay in the hostel with me," he says, before hesitantly adding, "It... is Order business, isn't it?"

"Why, of course!" the Professor says, sounding surprised that Filbrick would even question it. He ushers Filbrick inside and Filbrick takes a look around, frowning. It's been almost six years since he saw the inside of a library, and he can't say this one's very impressive for a first time back. The Professor waves an arm, and Filbrick realizes with a sinking feeling that he really is supposed to be impressed. "Behold, the storied stacks of the Miskatonic Univ-"

"Sir, shouldn't we go straightaway to the thing you wanted me for?" Filbrick asks, hoping to distract the Professor from his lack of a reaction. Professor Ganem deflates a little bit, but he braces himself up almost right away.

"Yes. Of course. We'll be needing a bit of privacy, but I doubt we'll have too many interruptions in the Restricted Section."

"Alright, sir. Why's it the Restricted Section?" Filbrick asks, genuinely curious about that- maybe very valuable old books that can't get touched without falling apart, or interesting misprints of old Christian bibles with swears in, or something?

"Because, and I don't want to alarm you, son, because many of the books are full of ideas and concepts that will stretch your brain to the very limits of human capability!" the Professor responds. "Why, many a seasoned professor and man of worldly knowledge has gone gibberingly mad at the revelations!"

"Oh, alright," Filbrick sighs, a touch disappointed. "I suppose that's a good reason."

"...yes. Yes, it is," Professor Ganem says, wiping his face with a handkerchief as he leads Filbrick past a heavy door into a dimly-lit basement. "Son, your talent for the understatement is, as always, a gift."

He leads Filbrick to a table with a chair, sets up a phonograph recorder with an unmarked wax cylinder, takes out a notebook and a pencil, and puts a book in front of him. "Read that, my boy."

Filbrick sits down, opens the book, and frowns at each page he comes to for several minutes. "Sir? What's this book called?"

"That, Mr. Pines, is the Voynich Manuscript, and it-"

"Sir, I can't read this. It's in a made-up language," he says, scratching the back of his head. "You can tell coz they break it up into sentences but they never make the same word twice, even when they oughta. It's just a bunch of nonsense with bad pictures."

"Aha, so it's the pictures that reach out to you-" Professor Ganem says excitably.

"No, sir. Just looks like someone who only knows how to draw reefer plants and, uh, doesn't know how to draw naked women but likes drawin' 'em anyway." Filbrick bites his lower lip, glancing over. "Sir, I don't know that I'm the right person for this."

"Boy, you are exactly the right person for this!" the Professor exclaims. "Do you understand that most people who read this book are drawn into inexplicable obsessions with reading and deciphering these very pages?"

"I mean..." Filbrick tries to find a way to say this without sounding like an asshole. "Are most people who read this middle-aged male professors, sir?"

"Aha," the Professor says in a small voice. Filbrick feels bad about it, now. "Well that- that is a discussion for a later date. Let's just say that the entirety of your reaction is well within what we expected of you."

"Oh, alright. Do I still have to read this?" Filbrick asks, and when the Professor shakes his head he shuts the book with a snap. "Sorry, sir. Was there anything else?"

"Yes, Mr. Pines, let's- ah, here it is," the Professor says, moving the weird picture book out of the way and laying down a heavy, leatherbound book in its place, his eyes averted. "I must warn you to be very careful with this tome, Boy, as-"

"Sir," Filbrick says plaintively. "Is this book in German?"

"Well-"

"Because it looks as though, and I'm not an educated fella, but it looks as though it's in German," Filbrick presses, looking up at him. "Sir, you know I can't read German. What's this about?"

"My boy, I have something to tell you," Professor Ganem says excitedly, looking up. "You see, everyone who looks upon that book sees script in his native tongue, sometimes even in his own handwriting, exhorting the reader to do and say such dreadful, ghoulish things that- that- well, never you mind any of that, Mr. Pines. You are the first person ever recorded to look upon its pages and see what is truly there. Can you copy down as much of the first few pages as you can in that notebook there?"

"I can try," Filbrick says, reaching for the pen and the notebook. "Say, do you want me to copy down all the little doodles in the margins, Sir?"

"Which doodles do you-" the Professor asks, carelessly glancing over. He stops, his jaw dropping slightly as his eyes widen. Filbrick watches him, frowning as the Professor's eyes lose focus.

"Sir?" he prompts.

"I have a very nice pen here," the Professor says dreamily, taking out a small leather case.

"That's nice, Sir. Are you feeling alright?" Filbrick asks. He looks down at the page- mostly nonsense, as far as he's concerned, although maybe it does say something dreadful in German. More concerning to Filbrick is all the little doodles in and around the words- squiggles and circles and triangles and eyes, little pointy things that look like dead trees, seven-pointed stars trailing downward like the meteors Stanford used to show him-

_Hey there, Shooting Star. You don't mind if I borrow Pine Tree for a moment, do you?_

-Filbrick inhales sharply, frowning. It's the smell of the library, he thinks distantly. Old books and polished wood and leather and blood, it's the _smell_ that's making him think of what happened to Stanf-

-wait.

Filbrick looks up at the Professor and cries out, slamming the book shut. The Professor's sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and a fountain pen that looks like it could be worth probably a lot of money is in one hand, and there's red blood mixing with black ink all over the Professor as he buries the sharpened point into the unprotected skin of his wrist, over and over again. Filbrick slaps the pen away and shucks off his vest, wrapping it around the Professor's arm to stop the bleeding even as the Professor struggles to throw him off.

"Professor! You have to stop!" Filbrick pleads, and for the first time since Colombia he's- he's scared, he can smell the stench of the jungle, the blood soaking his shoes, he's supposed to be shooting, he's there to protect the Professor but the Professor's hurt and he, and he, and he-

"...Boy?" The Professor sounds confused, and Filbrick shudders but he can't let go of his wrist or else the Professor might hurt himself again, might bleed out, bootprints through the blood on the library steps, blood in the hair of a girl Filbrick's age, Stanford smiling with more teeth than Filbrick remembers ever seeing-

"Mr. Pines, I-I'm free of the book's influence, you- you may let go now," the Professor says shakily, but- but- but he looked just like himself, he looked just like Stanford and he hit Filbrick and he never saw him again and and and the high, soft whine that Mickey didn't know he let out as they staggered, hurt and bleeding from the temple, only to be surrounded by the cultists' villagers, blood against the green jungle, blood against the green swamp, only Filbrick hasn't got his rifle and he's going to let them die and it's all his doing and-

"Filbrick!" Professor Ganem gives him a shake- with only one hand, it's not particularly strong, but Filbrick blinks and sees that they're just in that stupid library basement, just in that stupid fancy university, and the Professor might be hurt but he's not _hurt_ hurt, he's not dying, he's not bleeding anymore. Filbrick takes one trembling breath, his face and ears going hot.

"You were bleeding," he manages to say, and the Professor gives him a very awkward pat on the shoulder. "Professor?"

"It's alright, son, it's alright," the Professor says gently. "You saved me, Boy, no need to worry. It's alright."

"Fuck that book, is all I'm saying," Filbrick mutters, sitting back from the Professor on the cold stone floor. "Is it supposed to do that? Because I feel like there's no good reason to keep something like that around."

"Your statement will be instrumental in determining the ultimate fate of that particular text," Professor Ganem tells him, hugging his hurt arm to his chest.

"Professor, I'm not sorry to have been here to help you, but why me?" he asks slowly, looking over. "Why did you want me in particular to read that?"

"Men of this Order can sometimes- with extreme practice and very little chance of success- sometimes, Men of this Order are able to transcend the pitfalls and mind-destroying effects of the things we see, becoming Observers who can help direct their companions in the field. You remember the Colombian Temple?" he asks, and does not wait for an answer. "That was my first inkling that you could do this, Boy. You were... young, inexperienced, and frightened, but you could tell me with exact certainty the size and makeup of the room, the decorations, the way the... creatures moved, what they really were."

"Well, yes," Filbrick says, surprised. "We had proper light to see by, Professor."

"Son, everyone else saw a massive, jade-colored pit of snakes. Or glowing snake-mouthed monstrosities. Or..." the Professor gives himself a small shake. "No one could agree on what was seen in the Temple, because it attacked us all within the mental realm. Only you saw what was truly there, unencumbered by whatever fevered imaginings the rest of us supplied to the creature whose will was imbued into the very walls."

"Sir, it was just a room fulla half-naked angry people," Filbrick says, blushing.

"My boy, you do not want to know what it was I saw there," the Professor says solemnly. "You have more than proven yourself a true Man of this Order, Mr. Pines, but you possess a natural talent as an Observer. It was my intention to gain final proof of your ability in order to commence your training immediately." He shifts uncomfortably. "I am very sorry for having given you such a fright."

"Oh, I'm... just glad you're not hurt," Filbrick says awkwardly, looking away.

Once Filbrick gets back to the hostel where he and Mickey are staying, he shuts the door and waits until Mickey rushes over, questions all over his narrow face.

"Well? What's the mission? How'd it go?" he asks, and Filbrick frowns.

"Mickey, is it true I haven't got any imagination?" he asks, and Mickey laughs so hard that he nearly starts crying.

"Pinesy, when they were handing out creativity you was standin' behind the door."

"Oh," Filbrick says, piecing the sentence together until it makes sense. "Well, 'pparently it's a good thing if you want to be an Observer."

"You're going to be an Observer?" Mickey asks, eyes wide. "Hell, Pinesy, that's... damn dangerous work you're going to be doing."

"Is it?" he asks doubtfully, and Mickey slaps his back.

"No worries, Pinesy, I'll always be around to protect you while you're busy makin' eyes at abomination monsters!"

"Oh, good, I was worried for a minute there," Filbrick says, and Mickey laughs again. His laugh is almost good enough to make Filbrick forget the look on Professor Ganem's face as he hurt himself in the library.


	6. In the Moonlight

1926 is spending the summer reading and dictating old books to the Professor. 1926 is Maurice Prescott inconsolable over his sister's fate, and the old crew of the Constant Faith coming back together to put on a supposed-to-be-solemn wake, and instead Beatty and Filbrick drink too much and throw punches at one another until Prescott, laughing through his tears, breaks them apart. 1926 is the ever-widening gulf of silence between Filbrick and his parents. 1926 is spending all of October and November at Aunt Gloria The Witch's House, chopping wood and mending her roof and long evenings by the window with a mug of tea at his elbow and Kitty Jenkins in his lap, weekends in town with Mickey and Monday nights at Order meetings where they make him talk about the things he's seen, the books he's read and transcribed and failed to understand, waking up on Tuesday mornings with tears on his face and Kitty Jenkins pawing at him and on three notable occasions with Aunt Gloria's arms around him, not singing like Mickey would, just holding him and letting him gasp and wheeze and cry until he feels right again. 1926 is finding out that the Professor's friend who they'd all met last year is dead, killed by remnants of the cult to the weird island god. 1926 is winter in his father's home, unable to move or function, his brother's face around every corner, his brother's voice in his ear.

He does not tell his parents when he leaves; he just packs methodically, silently, and when he passes his mother he gives her a kiss on the cheek, when he passes his father he shakes his hand, and they don't realize at first that he's gone for good because he doesn't tell anyone where he's going before he shows up, shivering and slightly frostbitten, on Aunt Gloria's doorstep. Mickey and his dad almost faint when Monday night rolls around and he's in the meetingplace already, hands folded on his lap, eyes forward.

He sends his father a letter, explaining where he is.

_it should have been your brother, it should have been Stanford_

His father and mother do not write back.

Filbrick tells himself not to let it sting. Eventually it doesn't.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

1936 is slowly recovering his eyesight. 1936 is recoiling every time he looks in the mirror, startled by the scar tissue, and old Professor Ganem coming 'round with his teenaged son to read to Filbrick. 1936 is finally finding a potter's field in Arkham, Massachusetts, and running his hands over the plain wooden grave marker, too faded to read the name with his near-blindness, sixteen years too late to mourn a brother who he barely remembers except in nightmares. 1936 is Ruthie Pickman asking him when he's going to make an honest woman of her, and Aunt Gloria's cackling laughter as he chokes on his tea. 1936 is Mickey apologizing, over and over again, and for what? It wasn't Mickey's fault. It's not until Mickey brushes a cold, thinlipped kiss to his forehead and leaves that Filbrick realizes what it is Mickey's apologizing for. 1936 is Kitty Jenkins II having a litter of kittens and one of them is definitely Filbrick's cat- he's a fluffy little thing and he's got cat paws instead of human hands, so he doesn't really fit in with the other cats, his siblings destined to be witches' familiars. His paws have six little toes on them instead of five, and his eyes- according to Ruthie- are the color of sunlight through a glass of whiskey. When Filbrick gains his eyesight back he sees the color and it's only brown, but it's still a lovely color.

Aunt Gloria makes him name his cat, and he decides to name it after Professor Ganem, who's always been kind. Bartholomeow is a very good cat, and Filbrick mostly calls him Bart.

His father dies; it is a quiet funeral, and only he and his mother attend aside from the Men of the Order who live nearby, and Bart is still very small and stays silent in Filbrick's coat. Filbrick doesn't cry. Filbrick stays with his mother as they complete all of his father's old business matters, as they clear out the house that served as Stanford's empty tomb, as they make arrangements. She comes to stay with him and Aunt Gloria; at first Filbrick thinks things will be good.

Within three months his mother, too, is dead; it feels like every tear his parents didn't shed for Stanford comes out of him after that. Bart meows and tries to comfort him, but he's just a sweet little tom who's never seen anything worse than an empty food bowl. Old Fernando Alvarez- and when did Alvarez get old?- comes around and keeps Filbrick company for a week or two; Beatty and Durante come hand in hand to ask how he's doing and make sure he's not making any necromantic pacts, which he appreciates. Mickey doesn't come- he's in Australia, Beatty explains. Filbrick is glad that Mickey has an excuse not to come.

Ruthie holds his hand on New Year's Eve, and they watch the moonrise together.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

1946 is a little boy who turns five, Sherman David Pines. 1946 is moving back to New Jersey with his family in tow, to Glass Shard Beach, to wherever the Order tells him to go as long as they don't tell him to leave his wife and child. 1946 is a perfect cover for his position identifying and confiscating items of interest to the Order- a pawn shop in a seedier part of town, not far from the docks but far enough away from the town center that people don't feel like they're under the eye of authorities. 1946 is Shermie's hands on his face, chirruping sweetly that it's morning now and he loves him. 1946 is Ruthie's arms around him at night, sleepily shushing him when he startles awake, dreaming of the things he's done and seen. 1946 is Julius Durante coming alone, furious that Delta Green's been disbanded and promising- prophesying- that it will be needed again and soon. 1946 is a funeral for Fernando Alvarez, no family but the crew of the Constant Faith. Mickey shows up, wearing the hat and the sash of office, and he looks pretty good, the youngest leader that's ever been established on the Eastern Seaboard.

John Beatty's hand trembles too badly to light his own cigarette; Filbrick lights it for him.

"Don't need your damn help, Kid," he mutters, a man of fifty-five who looks ninety. His hard old eyes soften a little when they light on Shermie, the fluffy-headed boy unselfconsciously throwing a flower at Alvarez's new grave.

"Protect that boy," he says, squeezing Filbrick's wrist.

"I do. Every day," Filbrick says evenly.

"Protect him from this Order," Beatty wheezes, face frantic and sharp. "Look at what it's done to me. Look at what it's done to _you_ , Pinesy. Protect that boy."

"Okay, Beatty, I will," Filbrick says, and he's been thinking it for a while but it's the first time he's said so out loud.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

1956 is the start of an idea, slow and ugly and ruthless and simple. 1956 is two beautiful boys who turn five, Stanford Filbrick and Stanley Aaron. Stanford, who is as smart at his namesake- smarter, Filbrick won't lie about it- and has six little fingers on his lovely little hands, like Bartholomeow who died two years before the twins were born. Stanley, who is just as smart, just as sweet, just as brave, just as good as his brother, but for the fact that Mickey Jones has told Filbrick it'll be him they take. 1956 is despair, the knowledge that his son is exactly what the Order wants. 1956 is a thought that worms its way into his heart whenever he sees the pure love in his youngest's eyes, the memory of being blinded at 27 and the long, long recovery, the memory of all of his oldest friends dying hurt and scared and alone, the memory of high-pitched, manic laughter echoing on stone walls. 1956 is realizing that the Order won't take what it can't use. 1956 is teaching Shermie to drive. 1956 is teaching his baby boy to be something the Order does not want.

_a man of this order must be honest a man of this order must be noble a man of this order must be a hero_

"Come here, Lee," Filbrick says, and picks his baby boy up and sits him on the stool behind the counter. "You want to learn how your Pops runs the business, don't you?"

"Yeah, Pops!" his boy gasps, eyes round with glee.

Filbrick allows himself just one small smile, tousling Stanley's already-messy curls. "Now watch. Only two kinds of people come in here- stupid and desperate. And only one kind of person ever leaves here."

"What kinda person leaves here, Pops?" Stanley asks, drinking in every word.

"Suckers," Filbrick says solemnly, and to a boy of five the word of his father may as well be the word of God.


	7. At the Mountains...

"Remember, son," Professor Ganem says sternly. "You are here as a-"

"-student of graduate studies," Filbrick repeats. "For... biological sciences."

"Excellent," the Professor says, beaming at him. It is 1930 and Filbrick has tried multiple times to point out to everyone involved that while, yes, he can sort of hold a conversation with learned Men of the Order, he's not exactly prepared to live with and deceive a scientific exploration party for several months. At twenty-two years old, he is already tired of the Order, of the decisions it makes, of never really, truly knowing if he's making a difference or not, if any of them ever do.

Nobody seems to care too much whether Filbrick actually wants to go to Antarctica; every time he starts to bring it up they just talk about how safe it is and how he needn't worry about dying on the journey.

Aunt Gloria frowns when he tells her, and tells him that he shouldn't go if he doesn't want to. He really doesn't want to go, but he can't think of a good reason not to other than that, so when the Pabodie Expedition gathers in the Boston port on September 2nd, he's there with them. Ruthie's asked him to bury her diaries somewhere in Antarctica, and it sort of grates on him a little to carry so many books that he's promised not to read, but a promise is a promise, even if it's just a sixteen year old girl's fancy. Kitty Jenkins is old now, and Kitty Jenkins II is more impatient with Filbrick than the original cat ever was, but he will be very sorry to leave them both, even though it's only for seven or eight months.

Aunt Gloria and Ruthie come to the docks to see him off, Ruthie crying and pretending not to be. Filbrick isn't surprised by this, although he's very sorry for it just the same.

The Professor is there, though, and that's- that's unusual. He's already explained the situation to Dr. Lake about pretending Filbrick is one of his students, so he doesn't really have to be there, but when he spots Filbrick he comes over and crushes Filbrick in a bony, creaky bearhug.

"I will be here when you get back," the Professor says, and Filbrick awkwardly pats him on the back. "I am very, very proud of you, indeed."

"Thank you, Professor," Filbrick says, and the Professor gives him a watery smile.

"I'm- I-I'm sure your parents are very, very proud of you, too, Mr. Pines. Anyone would be proud to have you for a son."

Filbrick doesn't know if he can answer that, so he lets the Professor hug him again.

He bunks with another graduate student in the biology department- a real one, Silas Gedney.

Gedney takes one look at him and smirks, making Filbrick sweat.

"What kind of graduate student carries a rifle case?" he asks.

"One who... wants to... hunt penguins," Filbrick answers, blinking.

"Oh? You don't plan on using that on any polar bears?" Gedney asks, looking up at Filbrick through his eyelashes, and Filbrick swallows drily.

"No? Because there... aren't any?" he tries, and Gedney's smile is fast, a toothy blade that cuts right down to something Filbrick didn't even know existed before this moment.

"Well, well, well. You know something about biology after all, Pines."

Filbrick sits down on his bunk and wipes his forehead with his sleeve. He's going to be in trouble if he really has to spend the next seven months in the same room as this fellow.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Seven weeks later and Filbrick is absolutely in trouble. He doesn't know how this has happened- he's walked out with a handful of girls before, mostly witches and sisters of Order men, because he has a hard time trying to keep from mentioning the work the Order does. But they- it was always girls, for one. Except for Mickey, which is just- which is just silly, because Mickey's Filbrick's best friend and that's how best friends are. Also, he's never had to spend so much time with any of those dames, which, to be fair, maybe it would have been different those other times if he had. The only other person who's ever made Filbrick feel this way was good ol' Martha Langley, and even that that was... way back in school, and Martha was amazing.

Only Silas Gedney is kind of amazing. When he talks about science, even if it's nothing Filbrick could ever hope to understand, he just wants to sit and watch Silas talk. Silas's mouth is a work of art. He looks at Filbrick like he's a puzzle to be taken apart. He...

Filbrick is absolutely in trouble and he damn well knows it.

"We're crossing into the Antarctic Circle, Pines," Silas says, holding out a slim flask. "Time to celebrate."

Filbrick is in so, so much trouble.

"I don't touch the stuff," Filbrick says, and then, because he's a very frank person, he adds, "anymore."

"Since when?" Silas asks, the smile slow and disbelieving.

"Since I popped my buddy in the mug and we had to go to a funeral with broken noses," he admits. Silas laughs.

"Pines, it's like every time I think there's a hidden side to you, you turn around and make it a public side."

"Everybody's got secrets, Gedney," Filbrick says, blushing. Silas steps close, and Filbrick backs up until his shoulders hit the bulkhead.

"What kind of secrets are you hiding, Pines?" he asks softly, his voice low. Filbrick swallows tightly, thinking of the Order.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you, Gedney."

Silas snorts a soft laugh, and he smells likes books and cigarettes.

"We'll see about that, Pines."

Filbrick is sort of sorry that Silas steps back out of his personal space and sort of glad that he leaves the room altogether.

He is in _so_ much trouble.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Filbrick almost gives himself away at dinner, as they start getting closer to the landing point.

John Danforth twirls a fork- he does that every time he's about to say something to make himself sound smart, Filbrick's noticed- and leans forward into the group of graduate students Filbrick's pretending to be a part of.

"Lot of unusual stuff in the Antarctic, lads," he says, and Filbrick nods, poking morosely at something that is falsely representing itself as potatoes and beef. "I'm not going to try to frighten anyone, but there's loads and loads of stories about places- the Frozen Waste of Forbidden Kadath, the Plateau of Leng, well, places just like where we're going, only they've been stricken from historical recollection, see?"

"Can't be that stricken if you know about it, Johnny," Silas says from across Filbrick, and John huffs and rolls his eyes.

"It may as well have been, as it's only had the merest mentions made in the most obscure of occult texts, Sly," John scoffs. "You'd have to have read _De Vermis Mysteriis_ and the utterly dreadful _Necronomicon_ to have heard of'em-"

"I have," Filbrick says quietly, adding, "and it's not all that dreadful. I mean, it's not what I'd call award-winning poetry and the book itself isn't in the best shape, I don't know why they don't just transcribe it and print nice new copies, the old one smells like dust and gave me an allergic fit."

"You what," Silas says, blinking.

" _You_ read it?" John asks, incredulous. "The Necronomicon?"

"Yes, couple years back," Filbrick says, wondering how you manage to ruin something easy and simple like meat and potatoes. "Darn near had to learn Greek to do it, too, and that took longer than actually translating the darn thing."

"You can read Greek," Silas repeats. "Can you speak it?"

"No, I don't know how to pronounce anything," Filbrick admits. "Suppose one of these days I'll get a fella to teach me a thing or two. Latin was easier, my buddy's Catholic so he spent the winter teachin' me how to read and speak it couple years ago."

 _Latin_ , Silas mouths silently.

"Now wait just a minute, there aren't any extant copies of the Greek translation," John says, eyes lighting up. "The last time someone was rumored to have one, it disappeared with him four years ago-"

"Yeah, that was my, uh, my friend's uncle Richard," Filbrick says casually, glancing up. "He left his books and things to my friend and her Auntie, so they let me take a look."

"And you didn't go mad from the revelation?" John asks finally.

"People keep asking me that," Filbrick sighs. "Revelation of what, exactly? What am I supposed to be upset about, some fella wrote down poems about how we're all cosmically insignificant and it's a big universe and we don't know much about it? I mean, welcome to life, guy, that's what we got. Nobody lives for a reason or dies for a reason, everything happens by chance, siddown and enjoy something 'fore you do yourself a disservice." Filbrick sighs heavily and is then startled when he looks up to see both of them staring directly at him with identical expressions of mixed horror- John's horror, it seems, mixed with admiration, and Silas's mixed with naked amusement.

"What?" he asks.

"So you don't believe in fate or a higher power or anything, Pines?" Silas asks.

"Sure I do," Filbrick says, shrugging uncomfortably. "Nothin' to do with me, though."

"And what, you just sort of- breezed over the bits where it explains how to raise the dead and worship horror-gods and such?" John asks.

"I ain't raisin' the dead or worshippin' gods," Filbrick says, looking down. "And I'm gonna say, anybody who wants to fool around with that sort of thing is bound to get exactly what he deserves. Callin' down a demon for possession, raisin' the dead... honestly, it's not like the recipes for this stuff is called somethin' nice or surprisin'. Nobody's sitting there thinkin' it's gonna be a recipe for a cake and out pops a formless jelly monster wit' sixty eyes."

"I mean!" John starts, then stops, floundering. "I mean, I suppose!"

"What rattles you, Pines?" Silas asks finally. "Or do you simply have a heart of stone?"

"My heart's made of meat, like everybody else's," Filbrick says, taking a bite. "An' plenty rattles me."

Both of them are silent for a bit, watching him eat. Finally, John clears his throat.

"What part of your Biological Sciences degree necessitated your reading one of the most secretive and reviled tomes of dark magic known to man, Pines?"

Filbrick opens his mouth, realizes that he's about to tell them that he did it because he was told to, and that there's no way they're going to understand or be allowed to understand the Order or what it does. He looks down at his plate for a solid minute and a half, thinking.

"I think you broke him," Silas says quietly.

"Pines? Are you-" John starts.

"For fun!" Filbrick interrupts, sweating. "I read it for fun. Yes. Just... normal, relaxation... fun."

"Jesus Christ," Silas says, laughing into his sleeve.

"I'm Jewish," Filbrick tells him.

John looks pained; Filbrick has no idea why that is.

"Pines, what are you here to do on this expedition?" he asks.

"Assist with research, somehow. I dunno. Probably heavy lifting," Filbrick admits. "My best friend has a horse farm so I work in a barn a lot. I expect to be picking up large things and movin' 'em around for the academic types."

" _You're_ here as an academic type," Silas says, and Filbrick shrugs.

"Yes, well, there's plenty of scientists on board and not very many people who can lift a hay bale over his head, so."

Both of them lean back, simultaneously shooting each other inscrutable looks.

"Is there any possible way," John says slowly, "that you could arrange a demonstration."

"Not a lot of hay in Antarctica," Filbrick points out, and Silas grins.

"Bet you can't lift me over your head."

"I could if you didn't move around or kick me in the face," Filbrick says, putting his plate down.

"What about me?" John asks, perking up. He is quite a bit taller than Silas, but built along the same lines- slim, maybe a little muscle but mostly not. Filbrick shrugs.

"You can't be that much heavier than he is," he says, and Silas's eyes widen.

"Both of us!"

"Both of you?"

"Do it, Pines!" John cheers, and after a moment of consideration Filbrick nods.

Which is why, five minutes later, Professors Pabodie and Dyer enter the mess hall and stare at the sight of Filbrick with a graduate student slung over each shoulder, both of them cheering him on as he marches across the room.

"Gentlemen, this is a serious scientific inquiry!" Professor Dyer complains, looking shocked. "Please try to maintain the appropriate gravitas!"

"Don't worry, sir, it's dead easy," Filbrick says seriously. "I do this all the time back home."

"That's true, he does!" Silas chimes in, despite knowing no such thing.

"My god, the Biology Department must be a _madhouse_ ," Professor Pabodie mutters on his way out of the mess hall.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....the one where Filbrick accidentally starts a frat in the Antarctic Circle.


	8. ...of Madness

When it happens, it's a surprise to both of them, and it starts when Silas shakes Filbrick awake, just a smudge of dark gray in a room that's entirely black in the darkness.

"You were screaming and crying, Pines," Silas says roughly, fingers squeezing his shoulders. "You were asking someone to forgive you."

"I'm sorry I woke you," Filbrick says, and his throat hurts like he's been crying, so it must be true. "I'm not usually loud."

"Who's Stanford, and what did you do?" Silas asks him, and Filbrick hears and feels him sit on the edge of the bunk. Filbrick swallows back the urge to deny it, to deny the name, to deny its meaning.

"When... when I was a kid, my brother came back from the War," he says softly. "And we all- we thought he was alright, and he wasn't."

"Oh," Silas says quietly. "How old were you- when-"

"Stan died when I was twelve," Filbrick admits. "He died in Arkham Sanitarium. I never... I was too scared to come see him, and I- maybe if I had, maybe if I had just-"

His voice cracks, and he hears and feels Silas move closer.

"It wasn't your fault," Silas says, and his mouth is against Filbrick's ear. "You were just a kid, Pines. It couldn't have been your fault."

"I don't want to talk about that," Filbrick breathes out. Silas is very warm. "I would rather do just about anything else."

Silas pauses, tries to joke, "When you say _anything_ -"

"I'm only gonna be brave enough to do this once," Filbrick mutters, twisting in his bunk to make room, turning his head to one side to silence Silas's mouth with his. Filbrick pulls back after a few seconds, aghast. "I-I'm sorry. I think- I think I read that situation wrong. I'm sorry. I'll-"

"Pines," Silas says, pressing his finger over Filbrick's lips. "Pines, you don't have much practice doing that, have you." It's not a question, and Filbrick doesn't know if he should respond to that. He thinks he's vaguely insulted.

"I'm sorry," Filbrick says quietly, wishing there was even a sliver of light to judge Silas's expression by. "I'm sorry, I-"

"Pines. _Filbrick_ ," Silas says insistently, before pressing close and kissing him.

Filbrick forgets that he might have to warn Silas for several long minutes. He's not entirely sure- it is very dark- but they might both be naked or pretty close to it, when Silas puts his hand on his chest and moves it down to his stomach and stops.

"What's this," he says flatly. Filbrick is a touch concerned, before he realizes what it is Silas is feeling.

"Oh, tha's prob'ly a scar," Filbrick says quickly, leaning forward to do more of that kissing and other-stuff stuff, and Silas pulls back.

"I can feel that it's a scar, Pines. Why-" There's a funny tickling sensation, as Silas sweeps his fingertips to each side, trying to find the ends of the scar. "Where- Pines, how are you alive right now? You- you were _gutted_."

"Um," Filbrick says. This is not at all what he expected for his first time doing, um, anything.

"That's not a valid response," Silas says, and, "Christ, how long is this damn thing?"

"It goes all the way around," Filbrick admits. Silas's fingers stop moving. "So. Ah. I'm- not really a graduate student. I'm sorry for lying."

"No shit, Pines, you're a terrible liar," Silas says reproachfully. "Nobody who's talked to you for more than a minute thinks you're actually a graduate student. What does that have to do with what must- my God, Pines, how are you alive?"

"I am... not here for heavy lifting," Filbrick admits softly. "I'm here because, um. Because there- because there are people who are worried that this expedition would be very dangerous."

"You-" Silas's fingers are back, pressing into the scar tissue across his spine, making small, hysterical little laughs. "Pines, you were cut in half."

"Um," Filbrick says. "No I wasn't?"

"How did you survive?" Silas demands, and Filbrick sighs heavily.

"Well. Um. I belong to an ancient order of men dedicated to protecting humanity from monsters. Lot of fellas who you might call wizards. I was technically still alive when they put me back together, you know, it only counts as necromancy if your heart stops, and I was still talking and looking around and everything!" Filbrick adds proudly. "Hurt like a dickens, but that's to be expected, I reckon. But, um, yes. I got sliced pretty bad when we were fightin' this awful sharp tentacle fella."

Silas puts his forehead down on Filbrick's chest. "You were cut in half literally."

"I mean, not literally, it woulda had to been four inches up to be actually in half-" Filbrick starts, then stops at the sound Silas makes. "I-I'm sorry. I suppose that isn't very... helpful."

"Are you the only person on this trip that's part of this order, Pines?" Silas asks. Filbrick hesitates- he really isn't supposed to be talking this much about the Order, and certainly not to someone who might be a cultist or something, but if Silas wanted he could probably take Filbrick apart right now anyway.

"Well, uh, yes. Everybody else has family who'd miss their bein' gone," Filbrick admits quietly. "So... s-so when they needed to send someone out for seven months, right? I-It had to be me coz-"

"Because nobody would miss you?" Silas asks softly. "Jesus Christ, Pines."

"Well, to be fair, I- I'm also real good at not seein' things that ain't there," Filbrick adds. Silas is quiet for a few moments, and Filbrick sighs. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ruin-"

"You didn't, you didn't, I just- this is a lot to think about," Silas says sharply. "Pines, what if- what if you got hurt like that again, there's nobody around to save you like last time."

"I guess you'd bury me in Antarctica?" Filbrick says slowly, not sure what it is he's getting at. "I mean, I think it's mostly ice all the way down, isn't it? So... just, I guess, you'd bury me in the ice? I dunno."

"No," Silas says, and there's a possessive tone in his voice that Filbrick doesn't know what to do with.

"No, as in you'll... make them take my body all the way home?" Filbrick asks, frowning. Seems like an awful waste of resources, to keep his body from getting all runny and bad for such a long trip, only to bury it in the ground.

"No as in I'm not going to let that happen," Silas says, with a strangled laugh. "For crissakes, Pines."

"You can't stop some rangy forty-million-year-old monster from gettin' a good hit in," Filbrick says, after a moment. "If I die I die. Cosmic insignificance, remember?"

"Oh, fuck you, Pines," Silas says heatedly, pressing him back down onto the bed. Filbrick is not at all sure if Silas even wants to kiss him, but here he is, his mouth moving hungrily from his lips to his throat and back again. "You're here to keep me from dying and I can't do the same for you?"

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know you _also_ had experience shootin' the eyes outta misanthropic space-jelly vampire monsters," Filbrick says drily, and Silas groans.

"Oh my _God shut up_ ," he says, reaching down between Filbrick's legs.

Filbrick shuts up. Well- no, he's pretty loud, but he stops actually talking and that was probably what Silas meant.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It's... a thing. It's something. Filbrick isn't sure what he's supposed to call it. They only have a couple more weeks before they hit land and make camp, and when that happens they won't have a chance to talk or do anything in private, really, so every day Silas and John start trying to figure out what Filbrick knows and doesn't know about the expedition- to be honest, if anybody had sat him down when he was in Boston and told him the expedition's to search for ancient rock formations and evidence of life, Filbrick would have flat out told them that this seems like an awfully dangerous adventure over matters of academic curiosity and to sit him out. Every night Silas asks him questions- about the Order, about his family, about what someone like him is even doing out here- and the two of them do a lot of what Beatty used to call "Le Olde French Adventure" which... Filbrick does not understand what the French have to do with having sex with someone but he's afraid if he asks he'll look like an idiot.

They make camp, and Silas and John end up doing lots of science stuff while Filbrick mostly makes friends with the sled dogs.

Professor Lake finds a piece of rock with a footprint in it and everyone gets excited about the fact that the stone is terrifically old and from a time when they were pretty sure life didn't exist, or if it did it didn't have feet. Filbrick later confides in Silas his deep disappointment if they all end up getting frozen to death over a footprint that only proves that old professors were wrong about something.

Professor Lake decides to travel west with half the group, and Filbrick is pretty sure he's supposed to be going- he's technically in the Biology Department, same as Lake and Silas and everyone- but at the last minute before he starts to get ready to leave with the Lake expedition Professor Dyer takes him by the arm and tells him that he's needed more in the original base. Filbrick doesn't understand why until Silas corners him out of sight- pressing a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth, both of their faces already numb after mere seconds of exposure- and tells him that he just wanted him to be safe.

"It's my job to keep _you_ safe," Filbrick says, and Silas flashes that knifelike smile at him.

"Pines, there's nothing to protect me from out here. You can do all the protecting you like when we're back at Miskatonic."

And then he leaves with the rest of Lake's party. Filbrick does not say, _I would like that_. He does not say, _I am so happy that I met you and this is real._ He does not say, _I love you_. Filbrick does not know that he will not get the chance to say these things later, so he waves stiffly and pats the dog at his side.

Filbrick does his best not to worry. He explains to Professor Pabodie the promise he made Ruthie to bury her journals, and with a little bit of tinkering the engineering professor figures out a way to drill a hole just wide enough to drop in the journals and deep enough that they wouldn't be seen again, probably ever. The fluttering of their pages as they tumble down makes him think of moths clustering together at lampposts, of flocks of birds scattering in the Pine Barrens as he hunted, back when Stanford was still there to teach him how to hunt.

He does his best not to worry. He helps Professor Dyer take measurements and organize his notes and he does his best to teach John how to shoot his rifle and shyly avoids talking about Silas. When Lake's camp starts transmitting tales of strange, ancient creatures and butchered bones older than the oldest relative of humankind he spends far too much time thinking about how stupid it is that they're even here. It's stupid. It's terribly stupid. ~~They're in so much danger.~~

He does his best not to worry, but when the radio transmissions from Lake's camp suddenly stop he knows that it's not going to be good. He knows it's the Antarctic Circle. He knows that it's dangerous enough as a force of nature, on its own, but he has a bad feeling about the "strangely intact" specimens that were found, the "corpses" that seem so unusually fresh. Filbrick wants to beat some sense into these scientists who don't know the difference between something that's dead and something that ain't.

He is silent- dedicated to his silence- all through the trip to Lake's camp.

He knows Silas is dead when they get to the campsite. There's just no hoping that anything lived through destruction like that. He knows Silas is dead right up until they realize there are only ten individual human bodies- eleven, after they find the dissected remains of Dr. Maartensen on the table next to the dissected remains of one of the sled dogs. (Jumper, Filbrick had named him at the original camp, and Silas had laughed at him because all Jumper did was woof and jump up on people in excitement, and Filbrick didn't understand why that wasn't considered a good name.)

None of the bodies is Silas Gedney. Filbrick is sure that if Silas lived through whatever the massacre at the camp was, well, he'd have to be alright. If whatever had killed everyone else had killed him, it'd have left a body. Stands to reason. ("Must have been Gedney went mad and killed them all," McTighe says hesitantly, and Filbrick lifts him up by the front of his parka and snarls at him that he'd better take that back, Silas wouldn't do that, Silas didn't hurt anybody, and it takes the combined efforts of John and Professor Dyer to get Filbrick to calm down and let McTighe back down on the ground, and nobody acts angry at Filbrick for his outburst, everyone looks at him with understanding eyes and he hates it, he hates it so much, the sorrow on John's face, the pity in Pabodie's eyes, he hates it so fucking much he can't stand it.)

He refuses to let Professor Dyer and John fly the search for Silas without him. One dog's missing, Silas is missing, and three sleds are missing- it could be a miracle, it could mean Silas escaped, he has to know, he has to look. John knows what Silas and Filbrick- whatever it is. He knows, and he convinces Dyer to take Filbrick along. Filbrick brings his rifle. 

He keeps his name out of the official transcripts and reports, in the end. They fly over the mountains and find the city. John and Dyer seem excitable at first, then full of growing dread and horror the more they see. Filbrick doesn't get it. Some old abandoned city that- apparently, what does he know- that apparently is older than the oldest recorded life on Earth. He literally cannot give less of a shit. Dyer suggests that it means life on Earth was brought or intentionally created by beings from space. Filbrick doesn't see how that has any-fucking-thing to do with him or Silas or any of this. John points out that this place matches up quite a lot with various places mentioned in the Necronomicon. Filbrick hopes that means there's something for him to shoot in the face before long.

They find the cavernous building- a temple? a court? some kind of alien forum?- and they find the statues that look like massive living copies of the dead things buried at Lake's camp, and Dyer goes on and on about how intelligent and magnificent this civilization must have been, and Filbrick for one is less than impressed. If they were so wonderful as all that they'd still be around, he reasons.

They find the three sleds, and Filbrick stands over the one. He knows what will be under the tarp before John pulls the tarp off. He can't bring himself to lift it, both hands clamped firmly around his rifle, hugging it to his chest.

John removes the tarpaulin and flinches at the sight of two bodies, one human and one dog. Filbrick stares down at them for a long time.

"I'm sorry, Pines," John says quietly. Filbrick doesn't answer.

"We should move on," Professor Dyer says in a somber tone.

"H-hey," Filbrick says, dropping to his knees and shaking Silas's body. It's stiff and cold, but Silas always runs cold, doesn't he? "Silas, wake up. We have to go."

"Pines," John says, and Filbrick shrugs his hand away. "Pines, he- he's dead. We have to get moving."

"No," Filbrick says firmly. "No. Look. He's not hurt bad. Look, he's not even- he's not even bleeding. Silas, wake up, we gotta go, we can't stay, we gotta go-"

Professor Dyer pulls him back, throwing the tarp pack down. It doesn't- it doesn't make sense. Silas won't be able to breathe under there. It's cold. He's not dressed proper for the cold. They have to fix that, they have to take him back, they've done what they came for, they've found him-

"He's gone, he's dead," John says, and Filbrick knows John wouldn't lie to him about it but- but it shouldn't be so, Silas ought to be alive.

"I'm supposed to protect him," Filbrick says numbly. Ice is freezing in tracks down his face, gathering in the scruffy beard he's been too cold to shave off.

"Mr. Pines, we can't stay," Dyer says. "Danforth, do something."

"We- we must," Filbrick says, tonguetied for a moment. "W-we have to bring him back."

"He's dead," John says again, a hand on Filbrick's arm.

"He wouldn't have let me lie out like this to rot," Filbrick says, a sob threatening to choke him. "He woulda made you bring me back. I gotta. I-I gotta bring him home."

"Mr. Pines, we can't. The weight will make the plane too heavy to fly over the mountains- we barely made it over as it is," Dyer tells him.

"Then leave me, I don't care, take him home, you got to take Silas home," Filbrick snaps, and Dyer is trying to be kind, Filbrick knows he's trying to be kind, but what's the point, what was the point of coming out to look for Silas if they couldn't have brought him home?

"You're the only person strong enough to carry Gedney back, we couldn't leave you and take him. Please, Mr. Pines. We don't like this any more than you do." Filbrick wrenches away from him, standing apart for several long seconds. Finally he takes a deep breath.

"We should go see if we can find the bastards that did this," he says flatly.

"They're fourteen-foot-tall ancient monstrosities, Pines," John says weakly.

"Then those fourteen foot monstrosities are about to get fucked."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the end, they find the aliens who killed Silas- just a bunch of corpses, now, actual corpses, freshly killed by... something.

In the end Filbrick shoots three bullets at the monstrous thing that killed the aliens who killed Silas, and he knows they struck true and it shrugs off the damage, so he drops the rifle, throws John and Dyer over his shoulders, and _runs_.

In the end, Filbrick and John both see the reflected image of the thing- could be a monster, could be a city, could be empty space and stars- beyond the tallest mountains, and John begs him not to tell Dyer, and Filbrick goes cold- well, colder- when the thing looks like it's got an eye, when that eye looks directly into his gaze and winks. John Danforth has a nervous breakdown in the cockpit.

Filbrick dreams about the eye all on the voyage home, two months of strained, sorrowful silence. He spends his waking hours with the dogs. Professor Lake was the only person who knew how to contact the Order by radio and Professor Lake is dead.

In Boston Professor Ganem is waiting for him, and Aunt Gloria and Ruthie and Mickey, and with them is a man of the Order, second only to the leader of the entire Eastern Seaboard. Aunt Gloria sees it in Filbrick's face before anyone else does, tries to warn them, but the man of the Order congratulates Filbrick on a successful mission and ends up in the hospital with a broken jaw.

Filbrick ends up on suspension for a year and a half. Gedney's family buries an empty casket. Nobody ever tells him where.


End file.
